Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

This is an important section. I note Senator Tuffy is saying that there should be no safeguard in place and that the Department and the Minister should have no way of checking the position to ascertain the numbers coming here. From day one there should be a careful assessment of the numbers applying for permits. That is all I am saying. Perhaps I am wrong but time will tell. Nobody can predict what will happen in the future. The war is ongoing in Iraq and we do not know what will happen in world markets in 2004. It is right for the Minister to have a facility in place whereby he or she can assess the number of applicants applying for permits and match them with the number of vacancies. Does that not sound logical? If we need a certain number of employees to maintain our development, expansion, exports and the development of service industries, people can come here to fill those vacancies but we should not have an excess. The permit system, the triple mechanism, is a good way of ensuring we get the numbers to fill the vacancies.